Data centers are one of the largest and fastest growing consumers of electricity in the United States. In 2013, U.S. data centers consumed an estimated 91 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity—enough electricity to power all the households in New York City twice over—and are on-track to reach 140 billion kilowatt-hours by 2020. To ensure safe operation of a data center, its cooling system usually is over sized and runs excessively to keep it as cool as possible. This however sacrifices cooling efficiency and cooling energy consumption therefore skyrockets. A smart cooling system control logic which drives the cooling system to provide just the right level of cooling so safety may be guaranteed with minimum cooling energy use, is desired.
There are a few companies who propose control logic that aims to address the above issues. Some of them adapt several inherently conflicting indices in their control logic, resulting in less efficient control results. Some use a single HVAC unit to address hot spots, resulting in unsatisfactory thermal conditions. Some are specific to a certain type of server, rack or cooling system. Still some require human intervention and are not automatic enough.